Dear Sunil
1) The RTI Act has no specific provision about the procedure to dispose appeals. These are to be determined by the Rules (qv section 27)
2) The DoPT has consistently taken the stand (see persmin website) that CIC is a "body" as defined in section 12 (ie the C'IC *AND* upto 10 ICs) after obtaining legal opinion.
3) The C'IC (ie Mr H) decided that he was the 'karta' of the CIC's UF and could do anything on his own and "notified" the Management Regulation under "his" supposed powers of section 12(4) and all other (unspecified) enabling powers in this behalf.
4) The Hon'be Court has clarified that no Rule or Regn can be made without declaring (explicitly) the source of the power. It has also struck down the Management Regulations in its entirety while clarifying to a large extent the CIC's powers for purposes of section 18 (which is the CIC's primary source of power). The CIC will now have to proceed very carefully in future in terms of the Act and the 2 notified Rules mentioned.
For eg. the following actions would immediately invite contempt against any IC (I hope that Mr Habibulah is reading this)
a) Summoning a document in sealed cover to peruse if it falls within an allowable exemption. (as was done in Narmada Dam, Henderson Brooks and so many other cases).
b) Allowing legal practitioners like advocates to represent in proceedings.
c) Passing orders behind the backs of parties and simply posting orders on the website. They will now have to dictate orders during the hearings. If the order is reserved the operative portion will have to be pronounced in open proceedings. In fact the "court rooms" of the ICs will now have to be open to all parties (especially people claiming to be 3rd parties as defined in the Act .. no more can Mr Habibullah get away with saying that "Mr Roy claims this on a very wide interpretation of the Act").
d) Constituting a 2, 3, 4+ .. member Bench.
5) The C'IC has now pinned their hope on DoPT to amend the Appeal Procedure Rules to allow single, and other Benches. If DoPT does this it will create another huge problem for DoPT and CIC. So in the end the RTI Act will have to be amended
6) In sum The Court has examined not only the the clause which "empowered" the CIC to set up Benches but also the "source" of the power which the CIC claimed to enable this. The Court then struck down (emphasisng "especially") the entire chapter where this was contained. If the CIC now does anything contained in that Chapter (4) of the impugned Regulations which is not specifically allowed by the RTI Act and "prescribed" Rules they are in contempt - and as a contesting party in that case I can drag them off to Court.
Sarbajit
--- In rti_india@yahoogroups.com, Sunil Ahya <sunilahya@...> wrote:
>
> Dear Friends,
>
> With reference to the point no.13 in the Central Information Commission
> (Management) Regulations, 2007, and page no 38 of the recent High Court
> judgment,
>
> I would kindly request anyone who believes that if the second appeals are
> henceforth disposed off by either an individual commissioner or by a joint
> bench would amount to contempt of Court, to specifically quote relevant
> sections including sub-sections of the RTI Act which are violated, thereby
> inviting contempt of court.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Sunil.
>
> --
> It is not always the same thing to be a good man and a good citizen -
> Aristotle
>
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